Miscellany
by DarklingListen
Summary: An assortment of KakaSaku AUs that vary in rating, length, genre, etc.
1. A Precious Gift

**Author's Notes:**

**Originally this was just a self-challenge of 10 KakaSaku drabbles and or one-shots. But I decided that since I love AUs, particularly for this pairing, I'm not going to fight it anymore. Instead of trying to limit myself, I'm using this as a dump for all the AUs I write. **

**Constructive criticisms welcomed. As are prompts as I'm sure I'll get stuck at some point by running out of ideas.**

**This first drabble is a KakaSaku Generation-swap AU.**

**Title: Precious Gift  
Summary: Sakura gives Kakashi a precious gift, with a little heckling from Tsunade on the side.  
Rating: T  
This is unbeta'd, so apologies for any grammar/spelling mistakes or speedbumps.**

* * *

"It's a girl!" congratulated Tsunade with a brilliant smile.

Sakura stared at the thing placed in her arms, swathed in warm cotton blankets and remarkably heavy for something so small. Her tired limbs wrapped around the bundle cautiously at first.

A head of pale pink-orange hair peaked from beneath the cloth. The fist that rose up and bobbed Sakura on her nose seemed to break the trace she had fallen into.

She was a mother, an honest to kami parent. And somehow, the squirmy little thing she cradled to her breasts belonged to her.

"I don't," she started but stopped when she didn't know how to continue.

Tsunade placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's all right Sakura. Everyone reacts differently to childbirth."

Sakura nodded, greedily drinking in the sight of her baby as it suckled at her nipple contentedly. She was awed back into silence.

A pair of lean muscled arms wrapped around her waist from behind, a chin resting on her shoulder.

Turning, Sakura's eyes met Kakashi's liquid charcoal gaze in the dim light of their hospital room. A rakish lopsided grin couldn't seem to leave his face.

"Better now, ne Sakura-chan?" He asked teasingly, deep voice rumbling in his chest. She could feel the vibrations where her back lazed against his front.

"Yes. But this is still your fault," accused Sakura with playfully narrowed eyes.

Tsunade crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall across from the bed they both laid on. "I couldn't agree more Sakura. My apprentice was impregnated by a punkass jonin who couldn't keep his grubby paws to himself."

Her shishou had looked like the wrath of death incarnate when she had found out Sakura had fallen pregnant. And that was before she was told who the father was. After that revelation a few chairs and a desk had been thrown, and a mantra of "who gave you permission to spawn!?" had been shouted along with several explicit curses. Kakashi, to his credit, had taken the abuse remarkably well. Better than Sakura, who had eventually worked up the anger to break out of her shock and defend them both.

Now, Tsunade seemed calm and for the most part accepting. Well she had had seven months to come to terms with the situation and their relationship, and not without Sakura's relentless petitioning.

Tsunade buried her face in her hands, as if suddenly offended by the sight of everything. "I still can't believe my apprentice—" she said mournfully "—my beautiful and talented apprentice was tied down so early on—"

"Uh, Shishou I'm thirty-four," Sakura interjected.

"—out of wedlock—"

"Actually, we had a handfasting ceremony several months before . . ." Kakashi's voice died in his throat when Tsunade leveled a threatening look his way.

"—like that counts when you both were under duress —"

"We weren't really," they muttered together. So they had been stranded in some remote jungle for five months, the natives had been kind though far more traditional and pagan than Konoha.

"—her career will suffer—"

"I created and am the director of the Emergency Department for the hospital—" Sakura pointed out with a hint of exasperation.

She was too tired to rehash this argument for the umpteenth time, even if it grew more comical with each conversation. She had just given birth.

"—trapped in a loveless union to an old perverted org!"

_I thought she just said we weren't married_, Sakura thought to herself as she adjusted her daughter to rest more comfortably in the crook of her arm.

"I'm not an org, you don't even know what my face looks like," Kakashi defended his self with a mild voice. He had heard it all before too, and if anything found the whole thing amusing. "Beside, I'm not _old_! I'm younger than Sakura!"

That was true. Kakashi was thirteen years younger than her. In fact, he had been Naruto's genin student back when they both had been newly minted jonin and graduated from the old team seven.

No one need dispute the perverted comment, as there was no denying that the ninja read Icha Icha religiously.

As for loveless . . . .

Later, Kakashi gently pried his daughter out of his sleeping wife's arms.

Tsunade and the crowd of friends that had come to see them had left a while ago; leaving baby gifts and warm wishes in their wake. Thankfully, this gave the new family some peace and quiet. That is, until the bundle of joy decided that those were unnecessary.

Sakura was clearly at her limit. She didn't even wake when their daughter had started kicking and cooing, loudly, up at her.

Kakashi brought the baby up to rest in his arms, cradling her neck and head in the crook of his elbow. Longer than anyone knew, he glided around the private room, rocking his daughter to sleep with a small smile beneath his mask.

Adoringly he stared down at his little Ayaka.

She gurgled happily up at him.

Not even a full day had passed, and Kakashi knew the baby had him wrapped around her little fingers. But he didn't mind. After all, she certainly took after her mother.

Kakashi silently sidled up to Sakura. Careful not to wake mother or their now sleeping daughter, he leaned down to breath a light kiss against Sakura's temple.

"Thank you for the gift, love."


	2. A long Journey

**Author's Note:**

**This drabble is inspired by and a sort of crossover of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. For those who aren't familiar with it: Outlander is an adventure/scifi/historical fiction book series (now a TV show) that follows the main character Claire Beauchamp, a army nurse in WWII, through her life and adventures. It starts in 1945 when she suddenly walks/falls through a crack in time (marked by a circle of standing stones) into the past. She wakes up from her fall 200 years in the past, in Scotland in 1743 when the second Scottish uprising is starting to take root.**

**This is a drabble, so obviously I'm only working with a small tidbit from the series. [[[SPOILER ALERT for those just watching or reading the series now!]]] For anyone familiar with it, they'll know I'm borrowing/playing around with an event that happens later on in the series (yes, I've read the first five monstrous books in the series, years ago).**

**This is unbeta'd. Appologies for the mistakes. Constructive criticism welcomed.**

**Title: A Long Journey  
Summary: Sakura's journey that takes her from a doomed loved and back again. (Outlander AU / Timetravel AU)  
Rating: K+  
Word Count: 832**

* * *

Sakura jerked to a stop from her desperate sprint toward the Standing Stones. Turning, she glanced greedily over her shoulder to see her fierce warrior once more.

He stood atop an adjacent hill, overlooking the valley through which she crossed, a lone figure in black. From her distance, he looked strikingly similar to a scarecrow with his slumped posture and head tilted against the autumn wind. He was silent and singular but always watching.

His soulful eyes, onyx night and resolute, tangled with Sakura's. They shared a universe between them for not but a heartbeat. Everything they spoke and left unspoken hung heavy in the air, leaving a bittersweet taste in their mouths.

Then, with her eyes stinging and his gaze glistening, they blinked.

Sakura turned back to her escape for safety. Never again did she turn her head as she swarmed up the hill to the stones. Because behind her careened the danger of war. And when she was gone her guardian husband would join in the clash of distant thunder and clanking metal.

With all her might, Sakura threw herself into the fissure in time between two elephantine stones. She flashed out of late Edo with a loud crack like lightning to tumble into her time of modernity.

The air around her smelt burnt and crisp when she landed in a field of wild grass and overgrown weeds. The roaring sound of battle that had rung in her ears suddenly replaced with quiet nothingness and the far away echo of cars. Sakura stumbled about, disoriented from the changes and her long journey.

Her friends, Ino and Shikamaru, found her hours later sitting disheveled and dazed outside of a gas station. The payphone she used to call them with was still off the hook as if she had forgotten to even hang-up.

They rushed her to the nearest hospital with urgency Sakura did not think necessary. The entire ride there they would glance at her, worried. It was clear they had questions, as Ino kept opening her mouth but was silenced by a furtive look from Shikamaru. When they both thought she was dozing she heard a quick exchange in whispers between them. She couldn't make out all the words, her mind too fogged still and her ears ringed. But she could understand that they thought her too delicate in mind and body to bombard with anything more than essential conversation.

At the hospital, Sakura was diagnosed as dehydrated, malnourished, in shock, and four months pregnant. The last bit of information had Ino in a fit, demanding to know what happened.

Sakura refused to elaborate beyond she accidently took a journey to a faraway place and was back.

The authorities weren't able to pry any information out of her that Ino wasn't able to for herself. They along with the hospital staff speculated about what happened to her and why Sakura had gone missing for three years. However, the psychologist they assigned to her while equally unsuccessful in gathering information suggested the speculation hurt more than helped.

The father was never found. As Sakura didn't say a word about him or where she gallivanted off to for three years. What her friends did know about him they gleaned from observing her son, Sakumo. They guessed his intelligence must have been phenomenal as his silver-white hair. Because while Sakura was smart and fair with pink hair, no one on either side of her family was that pale in complexion or lacked pigment in their hair or that frightfully intuitive.

Behind closed doors, it was different. Sakumo would eagerly sit propped up in his bed at night, listening to the grand tales Sakura told him of his father. It was their little secret. And while Sakumo's father wasn't there with them, Sakura was determined Sakumo would grow up knowing him through her.

When Sakumo was grown, he knew both very little about his father and a lot. Sakura said his father was a good, decent man that was highly intelligent and dedicated to people. He also knew his mother thought of his father as goofy and equivocal in his humor. He knew nothing of his father first hand however, not how he smiled or how he walked, nor how he was in public compared to in private.

Sakura wished son and father had known each other in the flesh. She often thought they'd frustrate and amuse the other in equal turns with their differences that seemed to stem from being men of their time. Occasionally she would have a good chuckle over Sakumo saying his father was too conservative when Sakura would share his beliefs he had had on certain matters.

When many more years passed, it came time for Sakura to take one last long journey. At the end of it, waiting in his warrior regalia with a happy eye-creasing smile was her husband of old, Hatake Kakashi.

He greeted her with an embrace and a witticism of, "For once you're the one that is late."


	3. Before the Story Ends

**Author's Note:**

**A short and sad AU.**

**Title: Before the Story Ends  
Summary: Not all stories have happy endings. (No medical marvels AU? - Not sure how to class this one).  
Rating: K+  
Word Count: 248**

* * *

"You came back."

"I told you I would."

"I-I didn't think you'd make it back before . . ." She was unable to finish the thought.

Kakashi murmured softly, "I promised I'd be there before the story ends."

They shared a quiet, secret smile at their inside joke.

Her lips slipped downward. "I'm sorry to say my story is ending soon."

The unspoken words ate at them both; "_I wish I had that little bit more time with you."_

Sakura couldn't hold back her tears. There was no doubt, not one doubt that she wouldn't have long. She wanted more, more time to feel, to talk, to love. Each day was a fight, and she knew she was reaching her limit. Sheer will power and determination had seen her this far, but even her fighting spirit had its limits.

"Will you hold me?" asked Sakura.

"Of course."

For a time the both were lost to their grief and fear. Sakura weeping while Kakashi rocked her awkwardly, as the couch they were on was cramped with two. When the flood of emotions did pass, they settled together under a thick quilt.

Kakashi read their favorite book. A story about a world where there were happy-ever-afters, advance technology and medical knowledge, and illness was rare but treatable. Perhaps in another time, in another story, they got their happy ever after along with their love ever after. Perhaps in another story their ending wasn't so soon.


	4. Knowing

**Just a quick drabble I wrote yesterday to try to warm up to writing again.**

**Title: Knowing  
Summary: Kakashi thinks about his revelations he's had about Sakura over time (EWE AU).  
Rating: K  
Word Count: 513**

* * *

The day Sakura smashed the earth apart with her bare hand to reveal Kakashi hiding underground he knew he seriously underestimated her strength. When she saved Kankuro from sure death from Sasori's poison, he knew he grievously overlooked her skill. And when Sakura activated the yin seal during the Third Great Shinobi War, he knew she surpassed him as a ninja.

He never knew how to be a teacher. Even less so did he know how to deal with the emotions of other people. Both of which explained why he could take little credit for his students' accomplishments, as all three sought out more apt mentors. This was also why as he watched Sakura join her two other teammates, finally their equal, he knew he failed them. Each one in their own way he was inadequate to help. Kakashi felt he failed Sakura in particular. The last thing he ever taught her was how to climb a tree. All of life's lessons from then on had come from Tsunade.

Yet vigilantly he watched over his three precious people after the war. In the small ways that he knew how he tried to do right by them, at last. More often than not Kakashi felt he had little impact.

A good example being the day Sakura watched Sasuke leave, once more in tears. He had little comfort to offer other than his presence. Kakashi wished he had the ability then to be more for her, do more for her. But he was clumsy in all things non-ninja related.

Kakashi brought Sakura a basket of fruit the next day in an attempt to be more useful and supportive. Sakura had let him know he was rather not. _What am I supposed to do with it? I don't feel like eating right now._

It couldn't be said he didn't try. For the next month, Kakashi did his best to comfort Sakura and seemingly failed each time. Or so he thought until four weeks later when he managed to steal a smile when he brought her cake accidentally mistaking the date for her birthday, seven months early. They had an unbirthday birthday cake that day.

From there it snowballed to the point some time three years later when Kakashi complimented Sakura on her yin seal she bashfully blushed with a quiet _thank you_. He had meant it as a compliment about how far she'd come as a ninja but she had interpreted it as something else entirely. It may have had a bit of admiration for her beauty in it, though that was not intentional. It did lead to Sakura asking Kakashi out a few days later.

Perhaps he hadn't messed up entirely, Kakashi thought later as he slipped a ring on Sakura's delicate finger. After all, she had just agreed to be by his side for life. He must have done something right somewhere with her.

On their wedding day, he knew he had made the smartest decision of his life. And failure or no, he was right where he should be, with the right person.


End file.
